“Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.” — Alexander Pope | V2Melody

“Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.”

Meeting reassuring medical reports near death with characteristic irony · Conversation with Lord Lyttelton, May 1744

About Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

21 May 1688–30 May 1744

Alexander Pope, born on 21 May 1688 and dead on 30 May 1744, was the supreme English poet of the Augustan age and one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language. His verse made the heroic couplet seem at once inevitable, conversational, polished, and inexhaustibly flexible. In his best work, a pair…

More by Alexander Pope

Poems by Alexander Pope

More remarks by Alexander Pope

“I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.”

Making ruthless self-editing central to good writing · Preface to The Works of Alexander Pope, 1717

“every single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as those in Life itself; it is as impossible to find any two alike.”

Celebrating Shakespeare's ability to create distinct human personalities · Preface to Shakespeare, 1725

“To judge of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rules is like trying a man by the laws of one country, who was born in another.”

Arguing that art should be judged according to its own tradition and circumstances · Preface to Shakespeare

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